Color Change
by hummerhouse
Summary: A little poker night fun and some light conversation. One shot.


Color Change

Mikey leaned back in his chair as he surveyed the cards in his hand. Idly reaching onto the table in front of him, he snagged one of the orange colored chocolate candies and popped it into his mouth.

"Don't eat the 'money', Mikey," Don told him.

"I can't help it," Mikey said. "If we used celery sticks I wouldn't be tempted."

"Yeah, Leo would," Raph said with a chuckle.

"I think I could dig up enough willpower to not eat our currency," Leo returned. "That's all you need to do, Mikey, exert some willpower."

"Why do you only eat the orange ones?" Don asked, watching as Mikey's fingers once more crawled towards his stash of candy.

Mikey's fingers stopped their quest as the youngest grinned sheepishly. "I don't only eat the orange ones."

"Ya' always eat the orange ones first," Raph said.

"That's 'cause they taste the best," Mikey told him.

"There is absolutely no difference between the taste of the orange coated ones and the rest of the colors," Don said.

"Says you," Mikey retorted.

"Smart comeback," Raph said with a snort. "Come on bro', it's your turn."

Mikey scooped up ten candies and tossed them into the middle of the table, saying, "Kick it up to ten."

"No fuckin' way," Raph said, bringing his chair back down onto four legs. "You're bluffing."

"When it comes back around you can call me," Mikey said with a grin. "It's over to Donny now."

Don sighed and then wished he hadn't because if it was possible, Mikey's grin got bigger. Poker shouldn't be so difficult for him; he should be able to calculate the odds and bet accordingly. The problem was that lady luck was an incalculable factor and she seemed to have the hots for Michelangelo.

"Fold," Don said, setting his cards face down in the muck.

Mikey looked over at Leo expectantly. Don was a careful player who rarely took chances and therefore rarely won, and Raph had a tendency to be rash and easily goaded. Leo was the one who Mikey considered his biggest challenge. For one thing, big brother had the whole 'poker face' thing down pat and for another, his game was very strategic.

Leo eyed the number of discards in the muck pile and then glanced at the cards in his hand. He had three of a kind; a solid hand by all accounts but unlike Raph, Leo didn't think Mikey was bluffing this time. He was pretty good at reading his youngest brother's tells even though they were nearly imperceptible.

"Fold," Leo said, dropping his cards and treating Mikey to a rare broad smile.

"Put up or shut up Raphie," Mike chortled.

Raph's candy supply was low because Mikey had won the last three hands. This time Raph was holding a full house, Queen high, one of the best hands he'd had all night. The way Leo had hesitated made Raph think that he'd had a decent hand and that made Raph believe that Mikey had to be bluffing. No way could he have a solid hand if Leo had been holding good cards.

Shoving the rest of his candy to the center of the table, Raph growled, "Call."

It was all Mikey could do to keep from jumping to his feet.

"Bad bet, Raphael," Mike practically sang, slapping his cards face up on the table. "Read 'em and weep."

Mikey was showing a straight flush, five through nine of spades.

"If ya' ain't the luckiest damn player . . . ." Raph threw his cards down as Mikey began to rake his winnings into the already large pile on the table in front of him.

"Here." Mikey picked out a handful of red candies and handed them to Raph. "Consolation prize. Eat up!"

Raph tossed the candy piece by piece into the air, unerringly catching each one in his mouth, griping between bites.

"I don't know why we play with him," Raph said. "He wins about eighty percent of the time. I'd accuse him of cheating except he ain't got any sleeves ta shove cards into."

"I'm good," Mikey said. "I don't have to cheat."

Raph shot him a dirty look. "It wouldn't be so bad except he's completely insufferable when he wins at anything."

"Poor loser," Mikey teased. "I'll bet you wish you had a time machine so you could go back to ten minutes ago and not call me."

"Don't mention betting or time machines ta me for the rest of the night," Raph said.

"Geez, Mikey," Don said, chuckling. "We don't need any reminders about time travel, considering the experiences we've had with a certain someone whose name I won't mention."

"Afraid she'll hear you and show up?" Mikey asked with a grin. "No really guys, I'm curious. Renet aside, what would be the one thing you'd do if you could go back in time?"

"I wouldn't choose to time travel at all," Leo said. "I like things the way they are right now. One tiny misstep and our entire future could be jeopardized."

"I'd like to be there when we were mutated," Don said, surprising them all. "Not to do anything; I'd just like to watch it happen, you know, the entire sequence. How we wound up in the sewers, how the mutagen came to be down there with us; the four of us crawling around in it. I'd like to see the process unfold. It might help me understand how we came to be in the first place."

Raph reached out and swiped a green candy, getting away with it as Mikey swatted at his hand.

"You're a daydreamer, bro'. We came ta be because of an accident and ya' can't quantify an accident," Raph said.

"Master Splinter would call it Fate," Leo said. "The balance of all things. You cannot tip the scales towards bad, as in the Shredders existence, without also creating a counterbalance of good, which would be us."

"Thank ya' Splinter junior for enlightening us," Raph said. "Not everything has ta have a deeper meaning. Shell, not everything has ta have a meaning period. Like Mikey's stinking luck with the damn cards."

"So what would you do if you could go back in time?" Mikey asked.

"Oh that's easy," Raph said, smiling cruelly. "I'd go back ta the Battle Nexus tournament and this time I wouldn't let ya' goad me into losing my temper. Then I'd wax the floor with your ass."

"Now who's the daydreamer?" Mikey asked rhetorically. "Even if you hadn't lost it, which you did, I would have still beaten you, which I did. That was Fate too."

"That had nothin' ta do with Fate," Raph rasped, stabbing the table with a finger. "That was the same kind of pure ass luck ya' have at the card table."

"Mikey," Leo called to his little brother, hoping to avert a hostile incident, "since you're the one who brought up the question of travelling back in time, what is it you would do if you had that chance?"

Mikey appeared to be thinking about it as he picked another orange candy out of the pile and popped it into his mouth.

A quick sly sideways glance at Raph and then his face broke into a wide grin.

"I'd go back to when the Ancient One was giving us our first masks," Mikey said, "and I'd change Raph's from red to pink. That way he wouldn't grow up to have such a bad temper."

"I'll show ya' bad temper," Raph shouted, standing up so quickly he almost knocked the card table over.

Mikey darted out of his grasp and fled, teasing Raph as his hot headed brother gave chase.

Neither Leo or Don moved from their seats. Reaching across to the stack of candy on Mikey's side of the table, Don sorted some blue ones into a pile and slid them over to Leo.

Leo raised an eye ridge and asked, "They don't make purple, Donny. Which color are you going to eat?"

Don quickly extracted a handful of orange candies. "I'm eating these. Mikey really needs to learn how to get along with the rest of the colors."


End file.
